Frozen

As it turned out, something inside of me took hold of the anger that Dylan’s announcement had ignited, and burst it open like a flaming, blossoming flower. I was so caught up in my thoughts and questions of mine, Carson’s and Dylan’s feelings that by the time that I’d reached the last door, all three of the boys had already stepped through into the room beyond.

I stormed across the threshold with a particularly vivid image in my mind, of shouting up at Dylan and demanding to know what had really underlain his words.

I didn’t have a chance; unfortunately, as events had begun to repeatedly do in the abbey, once I entered the room, things started to happen very quickly.

I caught sight of Dylan inspecting a row of pedestal-straight, white candles, standing like soldiers in a neat line across the top of an oak fireplace. Its intricateness was much like that of the one that I’d seen in the library. Common sense kicked in then, cooling the growing aggravation in my veins, and I looked away from Dylan to see Gale admiring a row of gilt-framed portraits on the wall. The room was quite large, and longer than it was wide, but at the distance I could only make out half a dozen stern faces, all topped with night-black hair and an air of superiority.

And then my gaze swivelled to rest on Carson, who was studying a huge mahogany table, off-centre in the room; round, surrounded by ten, high-backed wooden chairs, their seats a dark and royal red velvet. Someone could have captured it all from the castle of King Arthur himself.

I hope that it was instinct, and not just whatever Dylan had proclaimed that was drawing me to Carson, but the last was the only scene that sparked a feeling of negativity in me. It felt wrong, somehow. And Dad had always told me to trust my instincts…

I moved closer. Resting in the centre of the table, which was almost a metre back with its vastness, were two clear, crystal-cut wine glasses. They were each fronted by small slips of paper like the poem had been written on, and the note in the mirror room. But something about these made them seem like name cards to me, like they were meant to be drunk.

Carson reached forward a hand to move one closer, so it could be read, and my bad feeling intensified. Something was wrong here. Something was very wrong. The setting was too perfect, too appealing to all of us.

Kayne would have a trap hidden right in front of us.

“Carson,” I called warningly, my breathing quickening. It was as if I hadn’t said a word; his fingertips touched the card and began to drag it across the table towards him. My heart jumped in my chest.

“Carson, no!” I cried, and I was suddenly running, knocking his hand away from the table.

I was breathing hard, pulse racing, and when I looked up at him I didn’t see the laughter that I’d been expecting. He thought enough of me to know that this wasn’t a joke.

But wasn’t it? Gale and Carson were looking over at us with expressions of mild alarm, though Gale’s appeared a little forced to me, oddly. I felt goose bumps rise along my arms.

“Adena, what’s wrong?” Carson asked quietly, ferventness still scaling his voice. He turned his head to look back at the card.

“It looks like the message I saw you read in the room with the mirrors, the one Dylan burnt down. Don’t you think it-?”

From an imperceptible crease in the wood, a spray of gas or very clear liquid, shot out into the air and hit him square in the face. I saw colour within its depths; just a flash, but enough to see it pass between his lips, parted in his words. He made a jerky movement towards me, and unresolved, because in the next moment he was on the floor.

And I failed to stop my mind thinking, Like Gale.

“Carson,” I breathed, and his name would have been a cry if all the air hadn’t just gushed out of my lungs at that exact moment. Again running footsteps followed the fall, and Gale was kneeling next to me. I saw his eyes fix on a spot on the floor, and I followed his lead to see the note. It had been knocked off of the table when I’d run into Carson.

I felt Dylan bend into a crouch on my other side, and I was shocked to find that he seemed even more concerned than when the similar event had happened with Gale so shortly ago. But this wasn’t the same; I’d been much closer physically to him when he’d collapsed. If it had been gas, or whatever unexpectedness had just been sprung upon us, to make Gale fall, then I would have gone down with him. No, that had been something else.

Dylan’s eyes were shadowed with worry. So much for hatred now, then.
I turned to Carson and breathed in sharply. He was completely out cold, his limbs bent awkwardly where’d he’d collapsed – unconscious before he’d even hit the ground - his head fallen back with his neck exposed. He was beginning to pale…and I didn’t want to know what that meant.

That wasn’t just knockout gas, Dee.

“The first will save you from dreams,” A voice to my left read, the blonde head bent cautiously over the small-printed note,
“The second will save you from poison, it seems,
A simple statement, but attached to a curse;
Deliver the wrong cure, and you face a fate worse.
The question: who am I?
Do I want you to sleep, or to die?”

Gale choked audibly on the last word and stared, horrified, into Carson’s face, which was now deathly pale.

“How do we know which one to give him?” he asked in a very quiet voice, his eyes unblinking, and unwavering from the sight of his fallen friend.

“We don’t,” Dylan answered, in contrast; his own tone was tight, restricted, and its control reminded me of the military, “Kayne is trying to make us guess the wrong cure, and kill him.”

Gale suddenly went pale, almost but not quite as vividly as Carson.

I mentally dragged myself away from losing myself in his face, his vulnerability exposed now past his sobriety and rage. I had to focus on the task at hand.

“One is a poison antidote, and the other seems to be…like a cure for a sleeping draught. I think that Kayne would want us to guess, but I’m getting a feel for how he likes his games to be played, and I don’t think that just that would be exciting enough for him.”

I gritted my teeth and got to my feet, desperate to swallow the choking tears in my throat. I was stronger than Kayne wanted me to be. I was not weak.

“There’s got to be something in this room that will give us a clue. Dylan, help me, please. Now.”

Gale remained motionless, but then began to inspect his friend, measuring his pulse against whispered seconds. I scanned the room with narrowed eyes, but decided to look back to the glasses.

Cautious, and making sure that I didn’t touch even a brush of skin to the table, I squinted across at the similarly-coloured liquids inside each to try and make them out clearer.

When my eyes adjusted, I could see that the left glass contained a nearly transparent liquid, of which was tinged with a strange, silver sheen. The right glass’ contents differed little, except for that they appeared to have a slight, rose-shaded tinge. Both would have seemed like water from a distance.

Mentally, I noted the observation carefully, and an idea crystallised alongside it. I spun on the spot slowly; tense, until I found sight of a bookshelf. I ran over to it, past Dylan and his quick, careful hands rummaging through a cupboard full of delicate-looking, china ornaments. I pulled up a nearby chair that seemed to be in its place for the particular purpose, and leapt up, standing on my toes to read the spines of the higher-placed books. I scanned each shelf with darting eyes, the foreboding feeling that I’d felt before Carson’s mistake, haunting me through every second. It was a painful process, because there were easily a hundred books before me and I knew that we had very little time to ponder anything. But after a minute or two, a title jumped out at me, and I snatched the book from its dust, jumped from my perch and began to delve into its contents.

A few minutes later, after following half a dozen references, I’d found a relevant passage and read it aloud hastily to the others.

“He who drinks the liquid of delicate rose shall be saved from savagery and toxin,” I quoted thoughtfully, “That must mean the poison cure, like with the savagery of snakebites; some of their venoms are well-known poisons. And toxin is just another word for one.”

“The glass on the left will only wake him up?” Gale asked in a call across the room.

“If he’s only sleeping,” I corrected anxiously, “How’s he doing?”

His voice was edgy.

“His pulse has slowed down a lot…but it would if he was asleep too.”

I bit my lip nervously. He was right. Carson couldn’t help us in any way, not even in the appearance of his condition. But that touched another forming idea in my mind. The appearance of his condition. We knew which cure was which. Now all that we had to find out was which one Carson needed.

“Dylan, have you found anything?” I shouted, wondering if it was time to return to the books once more. At least books were simple – they held information, stories. Nothing more, nothing less. They could lie to you, manipulate you, make you believe in the unknown or make you cry with happiness, humble with fear. But they could never hide anything. I just hoped that Dylan had put aside his insecurities in order to save his friend.

“Nothing that will help us to solve this,” he replied, both arrogance and an unexpected curiosity lacing together through his tone, “It’s just stuff. Letters, trinkets, photographs. Some of it looks like it’s Kayne’s.”

I was dumbstruck.

“You don’t think that Kayne actually lived here, do you?” I felt slightly elated. Maybe there was something in this room that was what we’d been looking for, that would lead us to his weakness, so that we could really find a way out of here and-

“Adena?”

I snapped out of the daze and whirled round to the source of Gale’s uncertain voice.

“His eyes. It’s like he’s dreaming.”

The first will save you from dreams.

I rushed over to him and bent over Carson’s face, tucking my hair behind my ears as I knelt. Sweat was beginning to bead lightly along his hairline, and his skin was as pale as ever. I watched, both mesmerised and horrified, whilst his eyes reeled under his eyelids, and they flickered almost open for a moment. I began to hope for a split second that he would be looking at me in the next, that maybe Kayne hadn’t been so cruel after all, but that was soon lost. I wondered what he was seeing.

“Is it the sleeping cure then, if he’s dreaming?” Gale questioned me eagerly, and I would have answered if Dylan hadn’t appeared next to us. I turned to see him tucking some papers into his jeans’ pockets.

“He could be hallucinating,” he said, “Kayne would have something twisted written under the idea of sleep.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Gale and Dylan began to hurl themselves into a debate over the possible meanings behind the poem, yet my own thoughts rapidly pulled me away from them and I began to wander to the books again.

What could he have used in order to make Carson like this? Kayne may have had some kind of unnatural, infinite control over the abbey and where it stood in time, like something straight out of a science-fiction novel, but he wasn’t magic. There were no witches’ potions involved in this. Whatever had been done to Carson had to have been natural, like a plant…or a herb. And everything had a cure, everything was known…

One of the titles that I’d glimpsed earlier flared in my head, and I leapt onto the chair again, running a finger along the bindings of the volumes until I found the one that I was looking for, not caring that it came away white with dust. It wasn’t long until I was sitting, flicking to the chapter page and skimming for poison.

There were pages and pages dedicated to it. Deadly nightshade, aconite, ivy…dozens of possibilities. I raced to the chapters and started to race through the entries, until I thought of a more efficient idea and called out to the others.

“I have an idea!” They turned in mid-conversation; Dylan intense, Gale fretful, “Whatever Kayne did to him, it has to have been natural, a plant. I saw something pass into his mouth when he was talking to me just before, and it could’ve been anything, but I’m betting that it was something like a berry or a seed.”

“What did it look like?” Dylan queried impatiently.

“It happened too fast. All I saw was that it was small. Smaller than a coin.”

He nodded to himself. I could tell that he was disappointed. Disappointed in me. I ignored the vague annoyance and slight pain that that made me feel, and went on.

“The point is, is that he has to have symptoms for something. And with this book,” I held it up to them for emphasis, “I think we’ll know if it’s a poison.”

“Read some out to us.”

Whilst Dylan seemed mysteriously preoccupied, Gale was looking directly at me, a sad smile on his lips, though he seemed genuinely on board with my plan. I returned the smile, grateful for his acceptance, and turned back to the book in my lap.

“OK…we know that he’s unconscious and pale. What’s his temperature like?”

Gale immediately pressed a hand to Carson’s clammy forehead.

“It’s quite hot.”

“That narrows it down a little,” I just kept on turning pages, “There are quite a few poisons in here that cause hallucinations. Has he had any convulsions since he fell, or has he been completely still, like he’s immobilised?”

“Still.” Gale’s hands fluttered nervously around his friend. Despite his kindness, he wasn’t the coolest person under pressure. This was going to take too much time…who knew how long it would take for the poison to work its way through Carson’s system, if poison was what it was? And now that I really thought about it, really considered it, I could see another possible meaning behind Kayne’s ‘dreams’.

Coma.

Dylan was with Gale now, checking the breathing; gently moving back closed eyelids to see the pupils, I assumed; testing the glands; searching for inflammation around the face and neck.

He really had wanted to be a doctor.

We tumbled headfirst into a question-and-answer interplay, my resourcefulness and Dylan’s calm patience binding into teamwork seamlessly, as it had before. And several minutes later we’d covered over half the chapter - we were working together and succeeding - but there were new developments.

I hurried to complete the anxious trio around our felled soldier, trying not to stare at the trembling that was gradually taking over the muscles in Carson’s body. It was terrifying; just as with Gale, his face was blank of all emotion, as if he were blissfully unaware of what was happening to him, or was painfully struck from having any form of control over his body. His expression was so…distant. Absent. As if he were far from himself, and was watching as we were.

And I couldn’t stop comparing and connecting this to what had happened to Gale. Instinct, Dee.

Was my own subconscious trying to tell me something?

“Mandrake, mandragora…dilated pupils, hallucinations. The legend says that the plant’s screams would kill all who hear…monkshood, aconite, Wolfsbane, hallucinations, tingling skin. This stuff is getting too similar now, and we don’t know enough to decide anything.”

My temper was catching up with me, and I pushed it away with a certain, familiar difficulty. It was just so frustrating, sitting there and pouring over a book, but not actually doing anything to help Carson, to achieve our goal. It suddenly felt like we were getting nowhere.

I jumped violently at a sound then, a sound that made a shiver run down the back of my neck, feeling like ice, and made goose bumps rise on my skin. It was Carson; a huge, choking gasp had escaped him, and his body was convulsing.

Just like Gale!

But this wasn’t the same thing…was it? How could something that Carson had seemingly consumed be having such similar consequences, to whatever mysterious act had hurt Gale?

What had Kayne done to them?

Dylan and Gale were rushing over their friend, working twice as fast as we had been in the past minutes. I followed their lead, reading and absorbing the information as quickly as I could. But there were too many pages. There was too little time…

“Adena, he’s not breathing…”

The voice was unemotional, detached. It was like the words had come from a completely different person,

“Adena, he’s not breathing!”

Motion blurred. Gale was eerily now the restraints, and even Dylan was frantic, trying to prop Carson up, to get some air into his lungs.

“Now would be a good time for answers,” he said, and I met his furious eyes with desperation, “Now!”

I didn’t even feel the impact of his anger until much later.

At that moment, all I could think about was Carson. I couldn’t hear Gale’s muffled sobs, Dylan’s barked instructions or the horrible absence of the third boy’s breathing.

I was too busy reading to save someone’s life.

There’s too much! I thought, panicking, turning pages, always just turning pages. How long had it been since I’d passed the halfway mark? How many pages were left?

Was the information that we needed even in here at all?

I flicked to the next page, and I could hardly believe my eyes. It was a new chapter. There was no more information, nothing else to read! I hadn’t found anything!

“Adena, we need it now, or we’ll just have to guess!”

I desperately began to flick the pages the other way, trying to find something, anything, which would prevent this from becoming a gamble. I would not gamble on a person’s life.

Dylan was bellowing at me, and Gale was going into hysterics, but the world went silent. My frantic eyes had caught a glimpse of words, just a few lines, which were exactly what we needed.

Winter Daphne (daphne odora)
A plant which, when its berries or leaves are consumed, the first being of a red variety, will cause mouth burns, headaches, convulsions and coma. This poison will eventually prove fatal.

I couldn’t even register it for a second, and when all the sound drained back into reality, I snapped into action. “Dylan, check his mouth!”

He was bewildered, angry and confused, and a glimmer of something shone on his cheek.

“What?!”

“Check his mouth for burns, quickly!”

Without any further questioning, I was almost surprised when Dylan answered with motion, and I rushed to stand before the table, ready to choose a glass on a second’s notice. There was a lot depending on this, on me, and on such a small lead…but it was all that I had. And if I turned out to be wrong, and made the failing gamble…I would never forgive myself.

And neither would the others.

“Yes,” Dylan said, exclaimed, “He has; it’s raw. Do it now, Adena!”

I had a moment to think. And then it struck me. The right glass was the poison cure, and it was pink. Red berries, red daphne berries crushed into water…would turn it to that rose sheen. Kayne would have been sure to make that connection. It almost made me fear that he would punish success with delivering the same poison again.

He liked theatrics, and provoking fear. He also liked lies.

Trust yourself, Dee.

My father’s voice rang sorrowfully clear in my mind, and I snatched up the right glass, careful to keep it level whilst I knelt to Carson’s side, and Dylan propped him up so he that could drink.

I cupped my hand around his chin and parted his lips. His skin was hot, feverish. I brought the glass to his mouth and poured the liquid gradually to him, the crystal glinting cruelly in the light. When it was empty, I set it aside, and all that we could do was wait.



All three of us had very different reactions to this particular test, and though a small part of me mourned the lack of sensitivity, the analytical side of my mind took me over, as it often did when I was stressed and under pressure.

Dylan paced.

He walked with his hand in his pockets, his head down, his shoulders hunched as if he were battling through rain. He’d moved to this relentless motion moments after we’d administered the cure. At least, what I knew, and what they only hoped, it was.

He was as far away from Carson, Gale and I as he could possibly be in the room. I couldn’t help but study it – it showed his way of thinking so clearly; he was such a sensitive person, open emotionally. At least, his emotions showed in everything he did, if not always the reasons behind them. Whilst he paced, his tension and worry and anger shone out of him. I guessed that he was angry at himself, blaming himself somehow for what had happened to Carson. I pushed away the notion that he was angry at me, too.

Meanwhile, Gale had moved little since it had ended. He sat only a foot or so away from Carson, and it seemed to me that he was fighting tears. Every now and then I saw his face slip into that disturbing distance, and I considered how much of a hold Kayne still had on him, mentally. Unwittingly, perhaps, or maybe that had been a part of his plans. To cripple his victims. To distort them. To shake them from the path toward change, even whilst doing nothing more than surveying what had already been done.
Gale continuously reverted from studying his friend, nervously, his bright blue eyes wide and fearful, childlike; to that absence and back again.

We’d talked a little, before - about how I’d made the decision, and my theories about Kayne’s way of designing his games, but that hadn’t lasted long. And I couldn’t bring myself to ask anything about what else had been done to him.

I didn’t know Gale much, but I could see his loyalty to his friend, his worry and anxiety on such a different tether to Dylan’s, and the ever-present fear that Kayne had brought out in him. I remembered Dylan’s brief description of him in one of the memories that Kayne had resurfaced, that he’d told me about - the blonde boy’s cries were loud and piercing in my ears.

I pondered the idea again that he had been the follower out of the three, not as strong-willed or demanding as either of his friends. Sensitive in a softer, less complex way than Dylan, and reserved in perhaps shyness, rather than Carson’s collective aura.

And me…I simply sat beside the fallen boy. I held his hand. It had cooled in the past minutes, but I was at a loss as to whether that was a good sign or not. I’d folded my jacket under his head in an effort to make him more comfortable…even if he couldn’t really appreciate it. It was silly, maybe, but it felt natural. The right thing to do.

I knew that my hope was a beacon in my chest, in the darkness of the room.

I waited, I held Carson’s hand, and I let my mind dream about one mystery that I hadn’t confronted yet: the rose.

Under Gale’s vacant gaze, I unclasped the necklace at the back of my neck with one hand, unwilling to let go of Carson’s just to make it easier for myself. The pendant in my palm filled me with an awe and dread just as intense as when I’d laid eyes on its twin, its brother. Its still wooden petals, glossy and so full of life, of love, were as familiar to me as they’d ever been. But the new emotions weren’t.

How was it possible? This place had been untouched for years…and my father hadn’t been born when it had been built! He was its crafter, I was so sure. But every evolving train of thought led me to doubt myself.

Hey, if holding an entire abbey in a state of time stasis is possible, I thought sarcastically, then maybe time-travel is too.

The lightest pressure on my fingers brought me back.

I looked to Gale helplessly – surely he would know how to best handle his friend after something like this? - but he was so far away, and I felt slightly queasy at the thought of disturbing him from wherever he was. In that situation, his mind was best left at its own pace.

Carson stirred.

I stared into his face, my hopefulness soaring at the renewing, natural colour in his cheeks, replacing his unsettling pallor. I squeezed his hand softly, my eyes skimming over every inch of his expression for signs of change. The rose pendant was warm and comforting in my left hand. Its grooves felt like home.

I glanced to it once more, caught up again in the bewilderment that its mystery entailed. If this experience had taught me anything, it was that a lot more was possible in the world than was deemed to be. But no, time-travel? That…that, I couldn’t accept. There had to be another explanation. This wasn’t a science-fiction novel!

I looked back to Carson for a second time, eager to escape my thoughts, and was briefly startled to see him gazing back. My heart leapt in my chest for more than one reason at the sight of it, at his grey eyes’ darkness.

“Good morning, sunshine,” I said, grinning, though slightly, barely noticeably breathless. I was so elated, so relieved. I suddenly felt, just so…happy.

“Adena…” he murmured drowsily, like he was only waking from a very deep sleep. I watched his gaze drift to my hand in his own, and then to my other. He smiled.

“Adena…by any other name you would smell as sweet.”

I almost laughed.

“I think you’re delirious.” I taunted.

“I think that you should try to appreciate Shakespeare’s words in the context of modern times more considerably...”

A flutter of warmth settled in my chest as the pressure was finally returned to my fingers, this time stronger, more alive. Here with me. He didn’t let me help him up to a sitting position, but he didn’t let go whilst he accomplished it himself.

“Tell me this story, Adena.” he said quietly, confusion in his face as he took in the sights of our absent -looking spectator, and the fuming, pacing, oblivious Dylan at the other side of the room.

“It gets complicated,” I warned, silently beaming at his hand still being clasped with mine. Its warmth was more different from the warmth, home and comfort of my rose, than the sun was from the moon.

“We have all the time we need.”

We smiled together, in perfect unison, and his grey eyes faced me wholly and completely, unfaltering, unlike Dylan’s had faltered before.